Mainstream – Page 42 – Femdom Resource

Mutually thrilling, kinky lovemaking (and EL James)

Reading mainstream articles on kink is always a hit and miss affair. On the glass half full side, they’re typically a lot better than they were even two or three years ago. Kink has infiltrated society from many different routes. While before it was either ignored or treated as a ‘laugh at the freaks’ topic, it now gets addressed more seriously (with just an undercurrent of laughing at the freaks). On the glass half empty side, it’s difficult to find a mainstream article on kink that doesn’t get something horribly wrong.

This article from the London Evening Standard is a good case in point. It’s generally pretty positive, giving a potted history of the terminology, and emphasizing the need for consent and mutual experimentation. Unfortunately, it also invokes EL James and 50 shades as a great example of defining boundaries and healthy S&M.

In Fifty Shades, EL James took care to delineate a relationship in which the sub-missive, Ana, had discussed and agreed her boundaries. ‘The prejudice around the whole subject is terrible,’ James told me. ‘Nothing makes me angrier than critics who suggested the book was about abuse. It demonises people who enjoy this lifestyle.’

I think reading that sprained my brain. EL James writes about a horribly fucked up abusive relationship that has no connection to healthy BDSM (as documented at length here), and then claims critics were the ones conflating abuse with BDSM. That attitude makes me think she should run for political office. It would be a shame to waste a degree of self-delusion that strong.

I hate to end on a negative note, so here’s a fun image of a couple who look like they’re genuinely enjoying the lifestyle. This seems to fit the final paragraph in the article, which invokes the “joyfulness of mutually thrilling, kinky lovemaking.”

I’m afraid I don’t have an original source for this. I found it on the Work Is Never Over tumblr.

A curious coincidence and a cute couple

My life of odd coincidences continues. I sessioned with Lydia tonight. Fun with needles was on the agenda, and I’ve now got a plethora of sore spots to prove it. Before I left for the session I had 10 minutes to kill, and spent it browsing my blogroll, where I stumbled across this latest post from Bondage Blog. It features a still from a movie called ‘The Pet’, and something about the red headed naked lady looked vaguely familiar. Sure enough, when I looked the movie up at imdb, there was Lydia in the cast list.

From the blog post you might assume she played the eponymous ‘Pet’, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Hers was a pretty minor part, although it did involve rigging her own bondage suspension set-up in a tree for one scene. From the reviews it looks to be a pretty cheezy B movie of curio value only. I doubt I’ll be seeking it out, but I did find it very weird to randomly stumble on that post and 10 minutes later be chatting to the actress in an entirely different context.

For the purposes of this blog, I need a different kind of pet to feature. Here’s an attractive one with an equally fetching owner. They make for a lovely couple.

I found this on The Answer Is Always More Art tumblr.

Vampire Willow

Life is full of odd coincidences. Yesterday I was joking about vampires, and included an aside about the price of a mortgage on a gothic castle. Today the very first story I read over my morning coffee tells me that Dracula’s castle is for sale. Unfortunately there’s no listed price, and no mention of how accommodating the local wenches are when it comes to open bedroom windows and diaphanous nightwear.

On the plus side, it does give me a chance to continue the theme with one of my favorites – vampire Willow from the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’ve blogged about her before, so I won’t rehash that post here. Although in writing this, it struck me that the show steered away from the traditional sexually aggressive and dominant female vampires. There was no shortage of evil females – Drusilla, Darla, Glory, Natalie French, Inca Mummy girl, etc. But no main character in the traditional predatory femme fatale vampire role, which is such a staple of the genre. The two closest matches are vampire Willow and Faith, both associated with the good character roles.

Paging Dr Stoker

Apparently vampires had the right idea all along. According to recent research, young blood can reverse the effects of aging, although the researchers are strangely quiet on necessity (or not) for virginity on the supplier of the blood. Unfortunately, before everyone rushes off to check out the price of mortgages on gothic castles and what outfits they can accessorize with an opera cape, I should point out they’ve only tested it on mice so far. It also needs to be administered via transfusion, so neck sucking isn’t going to help with any wrinkles.

While immortality doesn’t appear to be quite within our reach just yet, the story does give me an excuse to feature some sexy female vampires. This artwork is by the animator and artist Bruce Timm. He’s worked on numerous animated series from DC comics, and is the co-creator of the Harley Quinn character from the Batman series. This is a cover from a British horror magazine, that I found here.

The secret to a long life

When I first saw the title of this article – ‘Masturbation: the secret to a long life?‘ – I was worried. Not for my own lifespan I hasten to add, but for all the chastity bloggers out there. I like reading people like Thumper and Tom, and I’d hate to miss out on their posts. Dying early would probably put a bit of a crimp in their plans for the weekend as well.

Fortunately for my blogroll, the title turns out to be based on a data point of just one person – Betty Dodson. She’s 85 years old, looks about 30 years younger, and attributes her long life to masturbation, raw garlic and pot. Having written the famous book Sex for One back in 1973, she’s clearly an expert on at least one of these. While the article title may be optimistic, it’s a good article about a great character. She drinks, swears, organizes orgies and has spent 40 years advocating the benefits of self-pleasure. What’s not to love?

As for the image below, I can’t tell if she’s helping extend his life or shortening it. If she ruins an orgasm does that add a day or knock one off? Either way she looks to be enjoying the decision.

This is from the Femdom Empire site.

Quirky and kinky

I was done with posts on public play, temporarily at least. Then a commenter left me a pointer to an intriguing video that I just had to follow-up.

Regular readers may remember the story of the lady in London leading her man by a leash. It generated an unusual amount of media speculation and, as I covered in a follow-up post, turned out to be an art project. In that follow-up post I featured this image and jokingly commented that “I wonder what artistic statement they’re making?” I’d assumed it was a conventional kinky image, or possibly a provocative shot from a photographers portfolio. As it turns out, thanks to my very helpful commenter, I now know it actually was a more extended artistic work.

It’s taken from a 2 minute film entitled The woman and her Man, featuring a lady, her helpful submissive and a street preacher. It’s a quirky piece, kinky but not freaky, gently amusing and kind of cute. No Oscars will be awarded, but it’s unconventional and I liked it. The creator has a couple of different YouTube channels – ImaginePark and GirlFairytales. The movies and acting are a pretty mixed bag, but if you liked that first movie a couple of similar ones include The Women on the Bench and Famine Relief.

For an accompanying image I thought I’d step it up from my previous subtle fare. In some of the earlier comments we were debating where exactly the line on public play should be drawn. Here’s a good example of something that everyone can hopefully agree on. It’s hot, but probably isn’t acceptable outside the Folsom Street Fair.

I’ve actually failed to trace the original source of this image. I believe that’s Mistress Madeline and that Folsom is the only place that would allow this kind of public scene. But if anyone has any better information, feel free to let me know.

PDP

I’ve written fairly often on what I term PDS – Public Displays of D/S. Generally I come down on the side of letting shared public spaces be truly shared, rather than giving the majority veto power on their use. Kinky people are tax paying members of the public after all (or as Louis C.K. might put it).

However, this New Zealand man seems to have drifted into PDP – Public Display of Perversity. He was in his home standing at a window, when…

Burley placed a balaclava over his head before committing an indecent act using a sex toy, clothes pegs and a leather whip.
…
“The victim and her two friends look out the kitchen window several times as they could not believe what they were seeing,” it said.

I don’t want to make light of it, as clearly this was an asshole thing to do. But that bit about having to look several times (along with her friends) did make me smile. Apparently he was excited at the idea of getting caught. Given he’s now looking at jail time, I imagine that excitement might have diminished slightly.

His choice of implements no doubt added some extra weirdness to the story for most people, but I’ve had a lot of (consensual) fun over the years with those toys. Clothe pegs as zippers can be particularly interesting, as Aiden Starr shows below. I particularly like the red marks running down his legs from where they have just been ripped away.

This image is from this shoot for Divine Bitches. You can see another image of her putting the zipper in place here.

Missed opportunity

Advice columns have become far more entertaining thanks to the spread of the internet and the more open sexual culture that has gone along with it. Instead of questions on gift etiquette or workplace squabbles, we now get questions about what to do when your friend’s new girlfriend turns out to be your dominatrix.

I don’t think the basic advice given – ‘stop seeing her’ – is necessarily wrong, but the logic and framing of the response is horrible. It would seem like a good opportunity to reduce the stigma of sex work and focus on the work aspect of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant or a pro-domme. If you’re overlapping a professional relationship with a social one then there are a few obvious questions to answer. For example: What happens if I need to end just the professional relationship? What information am I comfortable sharing with someone in both circles? Is this likely to lead to a conflict of interest? What are the odds of problems in one form of the relationship spilling over into the other?

It might be that the answers to these questions indicate that there’s not a problem to resolve. I can conceive of some relationships and social groups where mixing in pay for play wouldn’t be an issue, although this particular case doesn’t sound like one. But there’s no reason to make this specifically about sex and and sex work. It’s really about making smart decisions that minimize risk for everyone involved.

Having missed one opportunity the columnist then really screws the pooch by making the blanket statement that ‘sex workers are not notorious for their long, stable relationships.’ So rather than reduce stigma she manages to increase it with a gratuitously offensive stereotype. She might have got the basic answer right, but the rest of the column is a huge fail.

The artwork is by the artist Camille MM. Given the original letter writers description of his sessions, it seems like an appropriate one.

Cocktail hour

It’s time for one of my standard pre-vacation warnings: I’m heading to Vegas for a few days, so updates may be a little more erratic than usual. Unfortunately I’ve got nothing kinky lined up, but I am looking forward to sitting in the sunshine and sipping a cocktail. The quality and quantity of posting may well vary in inverse proportion to the number of cocktails involved.

While I go and pack my suitcase, I’ll leave you with a lady enjoying a quiet moment with a drink of her own. She seems to have taken the necessary steps to ensure that the gentleman behind her will not be rudely interrupting her cocktail hour.

The image features Tara Moss, an Canadian-Australian author, presenter and model.

Whipping a ‘slave’

Apparently my posts on femdom and race are like buses. Nothing for ages, then you get two at once. My previous post was intended to be a one off, but then I spotted this article by British comedian Ava Vidal on a visit she made to London’s Club Pedestal. It’s an odd article, written by someone who clearly isn’t kinky. Unsurprisingly she therefore finds the whole thing strange. She finishes it by talking about race, and her discomfort with the idea of whipping someone and calling them slaves. Whatever your reaction to her comments (and I’m intentionally omitting mine from this post), it is interesting to see how somehow outside the kinky bubble might react to play that kinksters wouldn’t give a second thought to.

I’ve never attended Club Pedestal but it’s a fairly well known event. I was therefore surprised to read this in the article…

A white lady hands me a whip and tells me to beat the black man standing next to me…. later have a conversation with the black man and it turns out that this is his first time too.

It sounds incredibly dangerous to give a novice a whip and expect her to use it on another novice. Particularly in a space with other people around. She could severely hurt the submissive or take out the eye of a passerby. As the back of the man below shows, it’s possible to inflict some serious damage with a real single-tail. I can only hope that she was really given a flogger or a crop and is using whip to mean anything she could swing and hit with.

Unfortunately I’ve no idea who created this image. If you can help me attribute it correctly then please leave a comment. If found it on the Dominalova tumblr.